The Awakening 2 by Kelley Armstrong

Author:Kelley Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: paranormal
ISBN: 9781907410079
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group Limited
Published: 2011-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

“Uh, yeah. If you’re Oscar the Grouch.” She waved at a row of trash bins.

I lifted a lid and pointed at shredded paper inside. “Recycling. There aren’t any restaurants around here, so the garbage won’t smell.”

I continued down the alley. It dead-ended at a wall.

“This is great,” I said. “Three sides, the bins block part of the entrance. We can shift boxes around and put paper down to sit on.”

“And maybe, if we’re lucky, find a cardboard box big enough to crawl inside so we can pretend we’re homeless people.”

“Right now, Tori, we are homeless people.”

That shut her up. I stopped near the end of the alley and let out a laugh.

“Come here.”

She sighed. “What now?”

I waved for her to come over.

“Oh.” She reached out to thaw her hands in the hot air blowing from the vent.

I grinned. “We’ve even got heating. How perfect is that?”

“Too perfect,” said a girl’s voice. “Which is why this spot is taken.”

Three girls were walking toward us down the alley. All were about our age. One was blond and dressed in oversized fatigues. Another had dreadlocks. The third girl wore a battered brown leather jacket, and when she stepped into a patch of moonlight, I saw a thick scar running from her eye to her chin.

“See that?” the dreadlocked girl pointed to a tag on the wood fence. “That’s our mark.

That means this spot is ours.”

“We d-didn’t see it. Sorry. We’ll go.”

I started to walk away, but Tori pulled me back. “No, we won’t go. You can’t reserve an alley, mark or no mark. It’s first come, first served. You want this one? Be here earlier tomorrow.”

“Excuse me?”

The scarred girl pulled a switchblade from her pocket. It snapped open with a twang. Tori glanced at the knife but didn’t budge, her gaze locking with the girl’s.

“Check it out,” the scarred girl said to her friends. “This chick’s going to challenge us for our spot. How long you been on the streets, girl?” She looked Tori up and down. “Since about nine this morning, I’ll guess. What happened? Mommy and Daddy said you couldn’t

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) see your boyfriend on a school night?”

The girls snickered. Tori flexed her fingers, preparing to cast. I caught her wrist. She tried to shake me off. I got her to notice the matching knives now in the hands of the other two, but her gaze returned to the scarred girl, and all her rage from the last twenty-four hours bubbled up. The boxes near the girls quavered and rustled. Papers swirled behind them.

The girls never turned, dismissing it as the wind.

I clasped Tori’s wrist tighter and whispered, “Too many.”

To my surprise, her hand relaxed. Expecting a trick, I held on, but she shook me off, saying “Fine. We’re going.”

“Good idea,” the scarred girl said. “Next time, girls, if you see that”—she pointed at the tag—“steer clear. At least until you have the hardware to play.”

We started to pass, but the scarred girl’s hand flew out, smacking Tori’s chest and stopping her.

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